


tumblr ficlets

by chocolatemilk2



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:58:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatemilk2/pseuds/chocolatemilk2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of some of the things I send to people in their askbox or mean to make as a text post but don't (or do occaisionally) I'll add to this as more people publish or if I can be bothered to find it all I guess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Watercolours bleed through your bones on the pavement that the rain hits too hard. I run for you. You’re lying there, pale like the sun, and your head is stretched open for the whole world to see. Except they don’t see what you are. An honest man. You seek the truth wherever you can and you’ve never once lied to me. Never.

Your soft eyelids are fragile to slip closed and your fingertips stay still. No pulse. Too late. How could this be happening again? Please not you. I never wanted it to be you. But it is.

No. No, no, no.

Everything seems impossible, that someone as extraordinary and brilliant as you could be so vulnerable. God. Why would you do it? You didn’t ever care about the actual human lives, or being seen in a bed sheet, or mistaken for the murderer. I didn’t think it mattered what they said. We should have been able to disprove it.

Did any of it matter? Any of the things I told you, about friends protecting people and how it was all okay. Because you didn’t listen to them and now you’re bleeding on the ground and I can’t scoop it up and put it back in again.

I’m sorry, Sherlock. Oh god I am sorry. I should have comforted you more often. I should have asked you to talk about it. I never pushed you on anything because I worried about invading your privacy. Not Irene. It must have hurt, to keep it all bottled up. You shouldn’t have. You’re so commanding. I worried about you. We all did. But we didn’t see anything. We didn’t see this.

I was so stupid. I didn’t want to upset you. Something has. I wish James Moriarty had never come into our lives. I wish James Moriarty never took you away from me. You’re dead now. Won’t come back. That’s it.

God, it’s horrible, isn’t it? I’m never going to see you again. Only at the funeral and in pictures. Never going to hear you laugh or see you smile or watch you piece something out. The most wonderful person in the world is gone. The trees stretch up to the muddied sky and thrash their branches against the breeze. Come back. A whisper on the wind, seething in my ear. Settling and blowing tiny wisps of your hair against your scalp, a thin imitation of life.

All the other pieces of hair are stuck to your forehead and matted with brown. Liquid seeps onto the pavement, someone screams. People rush up like all the blood to your head.

They take you away from me. Come back. I haven’t said goodbye yet. I never got to say goodbye.

Fuck, no. No. Sherlock.

Someone who isn’t you holds me. I am so grateful but so gutted. They have someone who they love who is still alive and I hate them and I want you back and I miss you and it hurts.

It hurts so much. I hate you. You died on me. I watched you fall. I saw you scream. Silent and the wind stole your lungs from your breath and then the cement did.

You were alive and now you’re dead. A life ended in seconds and lived in decades. I watched you brush your teeth every morning out of the corner of my eye. You brushed your teeth this morning too. What for? There isn’t any point. This morning we were breathing, and none of this happened. I was eating, you were pacing, devouring air and sucking up all the space in the room. But you were there. Now you won’t ever be.

I’m so sick of it. Acting like I can go on. How can I pretend like I can live without you when I tried to die so you could run away? I risked my life for nothing. All of it’s for nothing because you’re gone.

Why are you gone? You shouldn’t be. You should be standing here with me, holding my hand and listing the details of my shock. Or just to observe them, and take steady notes. It’s something you would do.

I miss you already. I love you so much. You’re my friend. My best friend.

You were the only one in the world.

*

It’s the scream which sings through your body as you smile at me, searing, searching. How could we have come to such a fearless end when you stand like a saviour with your arms outstretched to stroke the heavens?   
  
How I miss you, love. It’s not even that I need to tell you, I just need it to happen again, I need you to be here so we can laugh and the noise can echo through the cold air and we can be rich with exhileration and the sound of our own breaths falling in our ears running like blood out of our insides to meet death. It’s going to be so brilliant, Sherlock…

Just you wait. I can see it. Bright overlays shining through our eyes in chaotic flare, the blast of neon floating through to your core as your cool skin heats with the red burn of tension skittering through your bones and sprinting your heart hot, faster. That smooth skin grows taught and stiff with trembling, and I kiss you, and you wrap your arms around me, your nails bite leaving crescent moon imprints. You tongue the hair out of my face and I laugh at you and we’re just two people with no hearts but scarred souls.

You kiss me as well your fringe is curling the wrong way and I smooth it down and run my fingers along the line of your nose, watch the tear drop behind the lights in your eyes which burn a blazing bonfire. Each stroke of you is a tiny embellishment, the story of one eyelash longer than the other and a blink which holds an unconcious repreive by something which stays with you, so rich and intricate and telling we would be the genius that no one sees, and you would be honest. We’d wear sunglasses on summer days and scarves in winter and I could feel their plastic slide against my fingers and the soft pores of the blue niche fabric.

And I would love you, Sherlock. I would have. Don’t cry. Jim’s here. You’re okay, lovely. Love you.

*

Everything is undersaturated without you.

As stale as myth, as flat as sand. Dull as what’s given, dreary routine,  wearisome. Life chipped away at like nooks on a sea hill. Blank beaches, old unchlorinated filters on reality. Flat night and no waves.

But then I remember what you’re like.

Sickening wilderness. Like feeling too full or drawing a well too deep. Aflare too bright on the eyes, a knife too sharp. A sob in the shadows.

I can’t watch you murder my friends, Jim.

I am going so far neither you or me can find me. That will be better than understanding how mundane ordinary life is. Existing but not living, I think it’s worse than suicide. You will never find me. You will never bring me back. I will never go anywhere with you ever again.

Goodbye.

SH

_My dear. You were never an angel, but even monsters get afraid of the dark. I suppose it’s too late to tell you I did it for you._

_Miss you, Sherlock._

_  
_Alone.

The ice wind batters against your skin and drips down your leg. Everything is blue and white and brown. Pale and stiff, frigid footsteps against the snow rain. It’s thick and blustery. You could taste the frozen water on your tongue but it wouldn’t melt, just cling and dig and grab at you until you couldn’t move and all the pain was sharp and you felt like you wanted to cry.

It looks as alone as a raincloud pacing through the sky before a storm has started, unwanted and unnoticed anyway as people always go and do their daily things that have nothing to do with where you’re looking. They all have their things to do and you’re trudging through a sleet and you don’t know why.

Do you know anything? Who you are? That should be important. You’re walking through a place that is all bright and firm and cold, and you ought to look to your hands and think for your name. You can’t remember what people call you, it hurts too much to try. You stop. It’s not like what they call you means anything when there’s no one there to call you it and remind you.

You want to label yourself though, slot yourself into a neat corner where everything is conceivable. Safe. A warm coccoon of lies instead of true naked fear because you’re lost. You’re lost, nothing might ever help you and that would be reasonable. You don’t know this empty place. You don’t know its rules. The mist could pass and you might be in a bullyard. It could never be clear and your vision could blur into blinding bouyant light and blister and scream like everything else until you curled into a ball and never let go.

It could go on like this, and on. Like you. Passing through in a ghost whisper. Smothered in a vicious wail of a murderous, wet breeze. Gone away. You could laugh. Away.

The sun shines somewhere else. You have no reason to be alive.

But you feel like you should?

You’ve no reason to be upset, but you are, and out of everything you don’t understand that’s scaring you the worst.

It feels like a shade too dark.

*

“So you don’t care,” Jim drawls, head tilted back and staring up at him from the head of the couch with his flat black eyes. His hand is curled around a skull, and Sherlock feels cold. The weight of the air outside is heavy with unreleased rain and some of the damp has seeped through to the room.

“Sociopath,” Sherlock murmurs, brushing a stray hair from Jim’s face. His fingers smooth back but linger where the soft strand has escaped him. He says, mockingly, “but we both know that’s not quite true.”

Jim breathes out slowly. The hair prickles up on Sherlock’s arm with goosebumps and he has to tense to control the shiver that runs up his spine.

“Prove it,” Jim whispers. “Show me how untouchable you are, how impenetrable, how the cold chambers of your empty heart ring with the non-sound of a silent hollow.”

Sherlock watches the way Jim’s mouth closes around the word, the slow wrap of his lip around a drop in noise that seems to have driven all other sounds out of the flat. “Meadow,” Sherlock says, taking the skull in hand. “It’s a lifeless _meadow_.”

“Go on,” says Jim.

“Full of dead flowers.” Sherlock’s not sure he wants to say anymore. He’s not sure he wants to do this, consummate them so they’ll have to leave each other again. “Would you like me to show you?”

Jim considers, quietly, eyes dropped back and head fallen forward. “I would like to see that.”

Sherlock walks around the couch, sets the skull carefully, clunk, down against the floorboards. He kneels, so he’s on eye level with Jim who’s sitting down, whose eyes are raised in rapture and fingers locked in lingered contemplation. Sherlock parts his lips to breathe, and settles his hands to rest on Jim’s shoulder, shuffles forward until they are close enough a lean would break them.

Sherlock lets his gaze settle on Jim’s lips, and watches the slow smile part his face, reaching a wondering finger to trace the sly curve of his movement. Jim’s eyes flick to his when he looks up, and Jim takes the finger in both his hands and kisses its tip.

“It’s something natural which has grown cold and sterile because it’s been scorched to a char crisp and cleaned away. Forgotten for a long time, deliberately, later accidentally. You never meant to burn so deep or so long. _Of course_. Out of dry ashes, a bud comes to bloom.”

“Ashes,” Sherlock repeats, swallowing. He doesn’t want to ever go. “Bury me in ashes, if I don’t live to see tomorrow.”

“You will live to see forever. I’ll tell it to you, in the hollow of your ear and a gun barrel and my gouged eyes. We’ll fall in finality should the daylight rise on our reluctant heads.”

Sherlock laughs spasmodically. “And maybe then the wind will settle you to sleep.”

“No,” says Jim. “My ears will always ring empty.”

Sherlock’s eyes catch his, humour fading as he takes in the dejected sorrow caught around the edges of Jim’s grin. He leans and he kisses Jim, a graze of light lips against each other, and he rests his head against Jim’s forehead. Sherlock shuts his eyes.

“We will always exist here, you and me,” Sherlock says, and tries not to talk around it. “However heartless life turns, when I have to dig your knife out of my back, and see you die and leave me, we’ll always be together where the empty places collide.”

Jim nudges his nose against Sherlock’s. “You and _I_ ,” he corrects, and Sherlock laughs properly this time.

Jim giggles too. Blushes somewhat, exhileration. Sherlock loves his gaze being all Jim, the unspoken folds of his eyes and the curl of the shell of his ear, all the beautiful things he’s captured into one endless artwork. “Here's to the masterpieces of existence. You and I.” Sherlock spreads a hand.

Jim takes it, and folds it in his, like the seal of an envelope.

“Our framed portraits.”

 *

Sometimes Jim feels afraid of himself. He can hear sirens blaring beneath the ringing in his ears and sees red and blue flashing in his peripheral vision, blasting small whites to get stuck there when he closes his eyes. He feels like calling for help with the sinking feeling no one can ever be there for him. Not himself. It's his fault, the bonfires on the subways and the broken chords in the loudspeaker. He falls out of practice with surviving in his own head.

He gets too caught up in everyone else's, the pointless pleads to some lasting appeal he can't buy into for all the pounds in the world. And sometimes Jim loses himself in immersion, and he becomes one of the meticulously calculated grains of sand or hairs in scalp and there are too many stars and too many dimensions for him to ever want to stop talking about. And he wakes up and what is he doing there? And it's worse because he can't stop once he starts and it started when he was born.

And he's sick of being so multifaceted, of overanalysing, he wants something true and solid and simple to say for himself. But only simple people like simple things and Jim can never go back to that, when he thought he was one of them and he was actually just one of him, all his life he's been different but he hasn't always had the luxury of knowing that. Everywhere he looks in his memory he has been waiting or searching for something that isn't there no one can ever find.

Because of course you can't find the end when that's where you started, life a full fleshed ironic circle he could flatten into tangible submission if it wasn't what vexed him most of all, looking over his shoulder, remembering torment in a million glances, awaiting it. He's a doll for someone else's amusement and these people are all puppets to him. Broken strings. He used to ask why he was so strange and unfamiliar and now he wonders why they're all the same. It all is. Controlled and refined.

And Jim sets off fires until he wishes he didn't know what his name is and he sends up hospitals and breaks down cars and he keeps hearing Bach in the corners of his boredom, but he doesn't want to die an unfinished melody. He hasn't found the right harmony yet but some days he just wants disonnance and the screech of blood pooling at night against his skin and to see someone else bleed as much as he does on the inside stuck in his head all night and day long like a violin concerto witha million movements.

And this is the most important of all, the finale, the last act of his play of human people, but he has never done anything worth doing or meant anything worth knowing because there has never been something lost enough to cling to his skin. To seep through it and grab him by the throat and look him in the eye and make him feel fear for something new. Premeditation is his forte. He will shine forever in the caverns of his memory, where no one is ever remembered or forgotten.

*

IOU a fall. Lean back into my arms, my dear, and the wind will whisper you away. Love is just like flying, you're an angel in your own head. Fall for it, fall like I fell for you, and fall into me. Winning is awful lonely for the lone genius waiting at the top. Alone in this together, we are. I'll shake your hand on my way to hell. You know that's the last page of this fairy tale. Your final problem. Sherlock. Bless you, but don't let go.

 

*

 

I could write a symphony of serenades for you, John. Of your eyes as bright a blue as diluted chlorine, and your smiles, as worthy as fresh light in deep, dark wood. Hands, firm and steady, in trouble and in tranquility, on your patient, your gun. What hard constant, humble and thankless like the breath at each our lips, heroic and rocklike. You, are not ordinary, John you're magnificent. For what it's worth, I wish I weren't dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a fluffy johnlock fic about leaves that turns less serious as it goes on
> 
> warning: serious and extensive mentions of the word leaves. Prepare yourself

Leaves flutter outside and their name extention, leaving, is left like a bad citrusy taste on Sherlock’s tongue, like he’s swallowed a lemon. Sherlock shuts the blinds and he sees the word sitting on the arm chair opposite him.

Sherlock pulls his coat off the coat rack every morning and he feels the word leaving in the second hook. He catches a cab and leaving is sitting in the seat next to him. Sherlock inspects a corpse and leaving is the extra coveralls the Yard don’t bring.

Sherlock tracks after the murderer and the directionturn leftturns into leaving. He loses sight of where he’s going. Lestrade scolds him for letting the killer get away.

When the case is solved, Sherlock is determined not to let the word leaving come into his head but thinking so intently about it means leaving’s there anyway. Sherlock takes the skull off the mantel to talk to. “Leaving, leaving,” the skull interrupts.

Sherlock puts the skull back down and tests his violin isn’t broken. It’s only mid afternoon. There’s still lots to think about. Mrs Hudson is going out for her saturday book club, and she calls “Sherlock, when are you leaving for the next case?” as she means to lock the door.

“Stop it!” Sherlock shouts, throwing his skull at the window. It’s open and the skull crashes through a curbside car window and sets off its alarm. Even the skull is leaving. Now Sherlock can’t fancy himself as Hamlet speaking to the cranium of a court jester.

Sherlock brews himself some tea to calm down. The tea bags are always leaving because they are made of leaves, like Sherlock is always humaning as a human.

There is a green sticky note in the fridge on the pudding. Leave me some!It’s a joke. Sherlock always leaves some. Sherlock is a good flatmate who doesn’t eat all their food and drink all their milk.

Sherlock sits down by the television. He’s sure his brain will run out of some varied extent to perceive the wordleavingin its finite formal shapes and forms but he has forgotten that he is a genius. The number pattern 1251229147 is the numerical series of leaving where a equals one and its is uncannily similar to a fake number in the terrible cop tv film he watches. One of the characters is left-handed. Sherlock turns the television off.

Sherlock makes to write up the case from today on his laptop and writes a poem about leaving accidentally instead.

leaving is a remarkably common occurance  
it is more operationally prevailent against the first inference  
leaving is an independent variable  
I need to factor into more cases?

Sherlock deletes the blog post as he has obviously turned mad and no one wants to here the ramblings of an insane man. Sherlock decides someone should invent the word leavy. It sits nicely on his tongue.

Sherlock is feeling lonely so he calls up a person who has listed their phone number in the telephone book.

“Hello, this is Carpet and Floors co., Jenny speaking.”

“If I left, how would you feel?” Sherlock asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“Is leaving a positive occurance or a negative one? What connotations do you think it has overall?”

“I… do you want to buy some carpets?”

“I would rate that a substandard, poorly inferior response Jenny. A top-grade return would be, ‘leaving can be liberating to some people, but those people need to think through their decisions. Only sad, dull, truly wearisome blightsmen leave when they could stay. Leaving can hurt the leave-ee quite a lot, leavers should put in warning before taking leave.’”

Brief silence. “Call again if you ever want to place an order.”

“I would like that,” Sherlock says softly. Jenny hangs up.

Sherlock grins, estatic to have found a new friend. There! Jenny won’t leave him. They have bonded over carpets.

Sherlock decides he won’t take on another case this afternoon. He settles on the couch for a nap and draws a hamburger in ms paint. Then the hamburger gets foiled by a brilliant detective.

Sherlock ventures outside into the afternoon and plucks a lemon from the lemon tree. Sherlock tries to make lemonade but apparently you need more than a lemon to do so.

The sun goes down and it looks like a giant lemon. People say the moon looks like cheese but it looks more like moon to Sherlock.

Sherlock is feeling a fraction better the next day. He manages to last an entire minute without thinking about leaving.

The word leaving looks a lot like the word leverage. Sherlock imagines someone saying “I am leaving for more leverage,” solemnly and seriously and laughs. But then he imagines himself saying “I have a lot of leverage here because you’re leaving,” and makes himself sad again.

Mrs Hudson’s married ones wear Levi’s, which are sort of like leaving. They leer at Sherlock and Sherlock takes pride in leaving for once with his nose held high. Sher

The name Lavery is a lot like the word leaving and Sherlock likes the name a lot. Sherlock thinks more people should be called Lavery. He enjoys the way it sounds in his deep baritone and so he says “leavy Lavery,” for many minutes.

Sherlock messages a girl named Lavery on Facebook and she says she loathes her name because it sounds like slavery. Sherlock agrees when he thinks he wouldn’t like to have a name that sounded like leaving.

Then again, most people leave the room when they here Sherlock’s name so it couldn’t possibly be that unfortunate. Perhaps Anderson will change his name to Lavery. That would show him.

After her church (Mrs Hudson attends church in purple and black all the time, she mustn’t enjoy it at all much) Mrs Hudson calls Sherlock downstairs to have a grave chat about The Leaving. Sherlock doesn’t go downstairs because he’s busy putting tea leaves in the kettle and watching them fluff out the spout but Mrs Hudson comes up and they both use long sentences and platitudes with personal invectives. Sherlock feels sophisticated.

“It is so deeply unfortunate you are up here by your own, Sherlock. You go find yourself a nice girl, or dead body.”

“Oh, but it is so terribly and tragically woeful you are not a nice girl or a dead body. I do like you extremely much Mrs Hudson, and I have managed to find a tender place for you beside my heart. Not in the organ, because I suspect that would lead to a severe and most unwanted cardiac arrest. But very close, or close enough that my personal space is reduced, in fact you are sitting stupendousy near me and my heart right now! Verily, I have a nice image, so don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“Some would question your matter of a heart, but obviously you have one or you would have concked it by now. It is so sad about that thing that happened. Have a biscuit.”

“My dear and most beloved Mrs Hudson, it is so melancholic that you have mistaken the literal with the figurative. You can rearrange my insect slides for me while you’re up here.”

Mrs Hudson does so and leaves. Sherlock slumps over thinking he feels so glum he could turn into a plum. He would have, had not Mycroft burst through the 221b door.

“Oh, hello, Mycroft,” says Sherlock gloomily. “You’re looking rather fat today.”

“Sod it, oh gracious me,” Mycroft returns. “I have a letter from the post man. He told you to eat it so you could retain information to your liking.”

“Oh, he did not,” Sherlock scoffs. “He said that to you, that’s why you’re so fat.”

“At least I’m not leaving,” says Mycroft, as he leaves.

“Your brain makes no sense!” Sherlock shouts out the window. “It’s located too far up your ass to be fully functional.”

Mycroft comes back with an ass cake that saysHappy Birthday, Sherlock,and it is a pretty good come back although Sherlock doesn’t want to admit it. He takes the card out of the bin and opens it up.

Cheer up misery guts

xxx

your sexy brother

Sherlock sends a card back because it is more formal and these days he does not prefer to text although he has no issue with text in handwritten form.

The cake tastes like you. Fat.

from the sexiest brother in all the Holmes liegsmen (not you)

Sherlock doesn’t actually eat the cake though he sacrifices it to a norse god he read about on the internet. “Loki, god of chaos,” Sherlock chants. “Hear my plea. Do lots more chaotic things. Love, Sherlock.”

Sherlock chants that a few more times throughout the day. The people at the coffee shop spill coffee on their laps when he sneaks up behind them and booms in a deep voice. Sherlock is formally ejected from the coffee shop.

“Chaos god Loki, return my calls. Smite these worthless scoundrels.”

Loki refuses, probably because he is too chaotic to listen to such reasonable orders, but when Sherlock gets home the cake is gone from the tv stand anyway.

“Oh, Loki,” Sherlock sighs into his UK pillow. “What are we ever going to do with you?”

Sherlock dreams he is swimming through a great pile of leaves, and a gardener keeps pouring more leaves on his head from his gigantic wheelbarrow. “Leave me alone!” Sherlock cries, but not in his voice. He wakes up giggling and crying at the same time.

Sherlock is so alone, with only imaginary leaves to keep him warm. Sherlock is sick of leaving. Sherlock sees leaving in the second room in their flat and he takes all the leaving things and kicks it out of the flat.

“Mrs Hudson! I fixed that thing that we were talking about!” Sherlock calls, but Mrs Hudson has left him for the calm lullaby of sleep. Sherlock wonders if it would be so strange living with Mrs Hudson as a mother-in-law. It sounds like leaving leverage.

“Too much leaving,” says Sherlock, crinkling his nose. “Leaving here and leaving there.” The gold ring glitters in the moonlight on the pavement and Sherlock kicks it into the gutter.

“Away with you, leaving! Begone I say!”

Sherlock trudges back upstairs and counts a lot of sheep. The sheep fall asleep in the leaves but Sherlock won’t. He plays the floor is made of lava instead.

“Oh no, Sally fell into the lava!” Sherlock cries. He puts on Anderson’s nasal voice. “Sherlock, you’re going to have to let me go!” “Oh Anderson, you understand!” “Just leave me to die already!” “But we’re covering so much new ground!”

Anderson falls in the lava because he has sweaty palms, probably they smell too. “I loved him not,” Sherlock sobs into the firplace’s mantel. The mantelpiece says “there there” as it coughs out Anderson’s ashes. They aren’t very pretty.

“I say, pooh-pooh Anderson,” Sherlock says, poaking at the dying coals. All the furniture has upturned because of him, golly Anderson. He should have just let go. Sherlock shakes his head sadly.

Sherlock wakes up with his head still nodding and doesn’t brush his teeth. His teeth turn a bit plaquey through the whole day but it would’ve been worse if he ate something.

Sherlock collapses on the kitchen counter and counts leaves on the spice rack.

Bay leaf. Ground lettuce leaf. Lavender leaf. Three leaves for three days.

Sherlock sneezes the rest of the day and looks for the ring until his phone jiggles.

Sherlock. I never left.

\- JW

And even if he’s only imagining it, Sherlock feels better.


End file.
